I’m going to be sharing my time with the members from Ottawa South and Kingston and the Islands.

C’est un peu ridicule que le gouvernement a décidé d’annuler la session d’été une semaine avant le « schedule ». Puis, maintenant, on ne retourne pas à la législature qu’après la journée de l’Action de grâce en octobre. Cela veut dire qu’on a une vacance d’été plus longue que nos étudiants, que nos enseignants; que la législature est fermée plus longtemps que nos écoles ici en Ontario, et qu’on n’a pas la possibilité d’avoir un débat ou une discussion pour améliorer la qualité de notre système d’éducation pour nos enfants qui retournent en septembre à des écoles qui agrandissent, à des écoles sans le système de chauffage nécessaire pour une bonne qualité d’éducation.

It’s a little ridiculous that this government has chosen to not only end the spring session a week early, but now, not return the Legislature into session until after Thanksgiving. This, of course, means that the Legislature will be closed for almost 50% longer than our schools. We’ll have a summer vacation that is significantly longer than our kids and teachers—teachers this government far too often decries for not having the same kind of work ethic that they do. And yet, they’re extending their own summer vacation by months—not just weeks, but by months. Of course, this is time that Ontario’s elected officials, the members of this place who are chosen by the people, could have used to debate important issues that are before us.

I’m reminded that the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing, who is also the House leader, promised us legislation this session on improving integrity issues across our 400-plus municipalities across the province. As we know and we’ve heard far too often, staff members in our cities and our towns, elected officials in our cities and our towns are going to work at city halls and town halls across Ontario and facing really egregious levels of harassment and abuse. We’ve had serious cases in Ottawa, in Brampton, in Barrie, in Mississauga, and undoubtedly in communities right across the province. This is a government that said they were going to address this issue. They’ve had legislation drafted for almost two and a half years. We have a minister who promised to bring this legislation forward before the end of this session. Of course, this session is ending a week early, and no such legislation has been tabled. I fear it hasn’t been tabled because a week after the minister said he would bring legislation forward this summer, the Premier was in Ottawa saying that he would never support that kind of legislation at all. So I have to question who is actually in charge. Is it the Premier or is it the Minister of Municipal Affairs and Housing?

Of course, we could have been using this next week and the six weeks in the fall that we’re going to miss to talk about the doctor shortage across the province. We have over two million Ontarians, two million of our neighbours and our friends, who don’t have a family doctor or a front-line health professional. This is a number that is getting worse and worse, and it has gotten particularly worse in the last six years under this government.

Just yesterday, I was speaking to a constituent of mine, Christie, who, like many parents this spring, received the thrilling news that their child has been accepted to university and their child is going to be going away to university. It is a thrill for many families to get to that stage in their life. As a result of being accepted to university, as a result of going away to school in the fall, her daughter was dropped by her family doctor. Her family doctor dropped her from her list of patients because she thought that she would be too far away to provide adequate continuing care. That’s ridiculous. If we allow our kids to be dropped by their family physician simply for being accepted and deciding to go away for college or university, we are going to have a tsunami of students who are going to be losing out on primary health care. That is an issue that is worth discussing and debating in this place, and it’s an issue we won’t be able to talk about again now until after the Thanksgiving break.

Small businesses in Ontario are suffering. They’ve been suffering for years as a result of the pandemic, and they continue to suffer. So this would have been a perfect opportunity to debate my colleague from Don Valley West’s proposal to cut small business taxes in half, saving small business owners up to $18,000 a year. That’s real money—real money that they could reinvest into their business, real money that they could use to pay off some of the lingering debts from COVID, real money that they could use maybe even just to keep the lights on and doors open and ensure that small business continues in their communities to serve their neighbours, friends and residents, and that’s a debate that we won’t be able to have now until after Thanksgiving.

Of course, as the largest city in the province, as the largest city in the country, which is in the midst of a potential devastating and crippling transit strike, we could have spent six or seven weeks we’re not going to be sitting here talking about adequately funding transit operations in Ontario. It’s possible that while the Premier and his cabinet are taking a summer vacation that transit in the largest city in the country might actually shut down the city. That is something that we could be debating, that we could be discussing. We could be sharing stories of those who are going to go through that pain and suffering as a result of a potential transit strike, but unfortunately, we won’t be here to do that, because, I presume, the Premier is going to be at his multi-million-dollar cottage in the Muskokas.

So, there is absolutely no need to extend the summer vacation well past Thanksgiving. It’s going to simply take away the opportunity to share stories from our constituents. It’s going to take away the opportunity to debate important legislation. It’s frankly going to take away the opportunity from the government to introduce important legislation. We know that they haven’t used the opportunity so far this year to introduce a heck of a lot of important legislation. I presume that’s why they don’t think they need these five or six weeks, is because they’re just bereft of ideas and don’t have anything else to bring forward.

So, with that, I can’t support this motion. We need to be here in the fall to debate these important issues.

And now, I’m glad to pass it on to my friend from Ottawa South.

Further debate?

Cette motion vise à échapper—échapper pendant six semaines—le devoir de ce gouvernement conservateur de répondre aux demandes de comptes dans l’Assemblée législative de l’Ontario, dans cette Chambre. Pourquoi?

Why is the government trying to evade the ability of the opposition to hold it to account in this chamber?

Speaker, I want to give you an example of the kind of question that we should be asking. This government is fast-tracking beer and wine in the corner store and paying a billion dollars for it. A billion dollars would go a long way in my riding and, no surprise, the people of Kingston and the Islands have other priorities. They want family doctors. They want to fight addictions and fight violence in schools. They want affordable housing. They want ferries that work. No beer on that list.

A billion dollars would go a long way elsewhere, too. In Prince Edward county, one of the worst roads in Ontario—County Road 49 has been one of the worst roads in Ontario as ranked by the CAA year after year. The province could re-upload County Road 49, making it provincial highway 49 again. My question would be: Does the energy minister care about his riding where this road—if you’ve ever driven on it, has just got slabs that kind of go up and down. It’s used by a lot of industry, by a lot of tourists and really should be taken care of.

Last week, the finance minister on AM640 conceded that for this move to put beer and wine in convenience stores just a year earlier, there was no cost-benefit analysis for this $1 billion.

Interjection.

I didn’t think that we’d be debating the non-prorogation prorogation today, because essentially there’s so little on the order paper, you could fit about half a dozen prorogations in what this non-prorogation is.

So, you have to ask yourself, why are we closing this place down for an extra six weeks? Is there not important people’s business? Does anybody have an answer? Maybe you can get up over there and say something, tell us why it’s right. I haven’t heard anything yet.

So, two reasons that I can think of: to avoid the scrutiny of this House, to avoid the scrutiny of what happens here every day during question period and during debate, to avoid the scrums that are in the hall, to try and take the steam out of politics in Ontario.

I also have to say, there’s so little on the order paper, and I think, “What are we doing this session? What’s the government’s great accomplishment?” Well, I’ll be fair, and I’ll say something good: We got Bill 200 done, but, you know, we did that on a Wednesday afternoon. It was like lightning speed. It was incredible. It’s important to get done. That’s good.

What’s this government’s signature piece in this session? It didn’t happen in here; it happened outside of here. What’s their signature piece? It’s a billion dollars to get beer and wine in the corner store a little more than a year earlier. What I don’t understand is, what is this obsession with booze? Ever since this Premier has come here, that’s all he likes to talk about. Remember that show, “Men, men, men, men”? It’s like “Beer, beer, beer, beer.” That’s what it is.

There are so many other things that are so much more important, like the 2.3 million Ontarians who don’t have a family doctor, and that number’s growing. What about our kids at school, those kids who have exceptional needs? They’re not getting what they need. How about their schools? Their schools are crumbling, some of them. How come that’s not that important? Why is there no sense of urgency around that?

We have ERs closing. We’re going to have more this summer. We have rural hospitals closing. This government’s promised legislation around private nursing agencies for two years; it’s done nothing, zip. They promised harassment legislation for municipalities. What have they done? Zip. They can’t get it done. I don’t understand why the government thinks this is okay.

Private members’ legislation: It’s going to back it all up by six weeks. That includes all of you, right? Your bills are going to be delayed. I’ve got a bill that I just put it on the order paper; it’s called Sacred Spaces, Safe Places Act. It’s bubble-zone legislation, and it’s modelled after what we do at abortion clinics, to make sure that people can go their places of worship without being harassed. It’s creating a safe zone. It’s going to sit on the order paper, and we won’t even be able to talk about it around here. We won’t be in a place where we can gather where we can talk about it—because I think all of us should do this. All of us should figure out a way to send the message that, those places where people worship, we have to consider them differently because people are very vulnerable. So we’re not going to be able to talk about that.

I’m going to say one last thing in the session, and I hope it doesn’t come across the wrong way. I did mention that the Premier’s office had tripled its six-figure salaries in five years—tripled the number of people making six figures. That’s pretty incredible. When you take the average of those salaries, an average of those salaries, well, they make more than any of you on the other side, including ministers.

I asked somebody the other day—I won’t say who it was, but somebody who knows the Premier pretty well, and the Premier said to that person, “If you want good people, you gotta pay them.” My question is: too bad for all of you.

No. So the finance minister in fact made fun of “pointy-headed economists” on the radio.

So how do we know we’re getting a fair shake? How do we know that this is a good plan? Why the hurry? Why can’t we just wait a year and save a billion dollars to tackle real crises?

Speaker, people in my riding want funding for Queen’s University and St. Lawrence College. They want smaller class sizes and more EAs so classrooms aren’t disrupted by violence. They want support for affordable, licensed child care. They want relief for those struggling on ODSP and OW. They want rural economic development for local farmers who have farms near urban boundaries. They want our local public health lab to stay open.

These are the real priorities—no beer on this list either. It seems like a lot to ask this government to do what’s sensible: wait one year and invest the billion dollars where it’s needed most. So, Speaker, I would want to ask this government, what is the real reason they are fast-tracking beer and wine in the corner store at the expense of Ontarians’ priorities?

By delaying the return of this Legislature by six weeks, they are avoiding scrutiny by the opposition, the attention that question period brings, the attention that debate brings, the attention that the scrums bring to the actions that unveil things like moving ServiceOntario from small business, private contractors to big-box, corporate contracts without any proper scrutiny, at least by this Legislature. Fortunately, my colleague from Don Valley West has gotten the FAO to investigate that.

It’s these sorts of things. It’s the fact that in the Premier’s office, the cost of funding the Premier’s office has gone up by so much. That theme and this picture of a gravy train and the ability of us to add cars to this gravy train, it seems every couple of weeks, whenever something else is revealed about the government—these are things that happen when the Legislature is in session. We help communicate and find out what this government is doing. We help communicate it to our constituents, and we help bring the concerns of our constituents into this riding.

For example, I have a constituent who is on ODSP who did a calculation. She told me, “You know what? It would be cheaper for me to drive next door to Napanee to get dentures rather than have ODSP pay for dentures from students at Georgian College but then also have to pay hundreds and hundreds of dollars for the transportation costs instead of my just going to Napanee and paying more for the local procedure.” These kinds of things we are able to bring to the Legislature and bring to the attention of the government, the attention of the press and the attention of fellow MPPs across the province, because maybe they’ve heard the same problem, and then a consensus builds.

This is what happens when the Legislature sits, and the government should not be avoiding—you know, we pay probably about a million dollars a day to run this Legislature. The Legislature should not be avoiding the scrutiny that the presence of members here and the proceedings bring to the government.

So I oppose this motion, and I urge all of my colleagues to oppose this motion.

I recognize the member from Ottawa South.

I recognize the member from Niagara Falls.

Northern Ontario.

Order.

The member for Hamilton West–Ancaster–Dundas, are you finished?

Sharing your time with the member for Timiskaming–Cochrane.

Pursuant to standing order 32(b), the time allotted for the afternoon routine has expired. I am now required to put the question.

Mr. Jones, Chatham-Kent–Leamington, has moved that when the House adjourns today, it shall stand adjourned until 10:15 a.m. on Monday, October 21, 2024; and

That, in addition to any other committee meetings authorized by the House, the standing committees be authorized to meet for the purpose of the consideration of the estimates during the 2024 summer adjournment of the House.

Is it the pleasure of the House that the motion carry? I heard some noes.

All those in favour of the motion will say “aye.”

All those opposed will say “nay.”

In my opinion, the ayes have it.

Call in the members. This will be a 30-minute bell.

The division bells rang from 1430 to 1500.

That, in addition to any other committee meetings authorized by the House, the standing committees be authorized to meet for the purpose of the consideration of the estimates during the 2024 summer adjournment of the House.

All those in favour of the motion will please rise one at a time and be recognized by the Clerk.

Motion agreed to.

Thank you, Razan, Milena, Steffi, Evan, Bridget, Olivia, Kaitlin, Astrid, Taylor and Rhea, for your contributions to our Legislature this year. All the best as you wrap up your OLIP year, and we look forward to seeing the important contributions you will go on to make in the future.

Applause.

It is therefore 6 o’clock.

Madame Collard moved second reading of the following bill:

Bill 133, An Act to proclaim the month of September as Kids’ Online Safety and Privacy Month / Projet de loi 133, Loi proclamant le mois de septembre Mois de la sécurité et de la protection de la vie privée des enfants en ligne.

Shame on the NDP.

I recognize the member from Hamilton West–Ancaster–Dundas.

I share my colleague’s complete disgust that we will not be sitting for 19 weeks.

There are so many things that have been described that people are facing: housing issues; homelessness; no family doctors; long, long emergency waits.

I particularly want to say that people also won’t have their voices heard in this House because we are ending this so early—petitions like the ones that I have here, that were signed by almost 1,000 people in six days, who are very upset with the suspension of programs at Fleming College, including programs that address environmental studies. That’s something this government could use—some lessons on environmental studies. We currently have a climate emergency, and this is a government with absolutely no climate plan. So that would have been a good petition for the government to have been able to hear.

I also would have been able to talk about the folks in Dresden who have a petition. They are concerned about the potential damaging impacts to Sydenham River by the Dresden landfill. You should have heard about that.

Finally, I have to say I’m absolutely horrified that in my riding there’s a for-profit blood plasma clinic setting up shop. They will pay for blood plasma, and they’re allowed to sell it internationally. The concern is that this is a company that’s going to prey on people who are already vulnerable, who already need income and would be prepared to sell their blood products for profit. That is a shame, and that’s something that this government should stay and hear about.

What I want to focus on is a very shocking report that has just been published, and it comes from the University of Toronto’s Investigative Journalism Bureau. This concerns our children in schools. We’ve already been hearing about how underfunded our schools are and the conditions that our kids are going to school in. We have the absolute tragedy of Landyn dying in an isolation room in a school because there were no resources, no staff there to support. That’s on this government.

This report from the University of Toronto’s Investigative Journalism Bureau is showing that toxic lead in Ontario schools is a significant and serious health risk. In fact, in the past four years, nearly half of the province’s schools have had at least one test for toxic lead fail. That lead-laced water has impacted more than 800,000 students and roughly 2,300 elementary and high schools all across the province. Our children are going to school and if they drink the water, they are drinking lead, and I am sure that the government is aware of this, because we know that the schools have an infrastructure backlog of billions. But the very fact that this government knows that our children could be exposed to lead and they continue to underfund infrastructure and upgrades is completely shameful. We should be here over the course of the summer and into the fall to talk about the findings of this report and to come up with plans to address these shocking findings, to come up with plans that will put the minds of parents ease who know that their kids are going to school in classrooms where the water is toxic because of lead.

And finally, it’s shocking to see that this study will impact not only just schools, but it also impacts daycares. In a really shocking example, the Assikinack childcare centre in Barrie—the Minister of the Environment’s own riding—had among the highest rates of troubling tests among daycares. So daycares are failing these tests: 12 out of 16 tests in these daycares in Barrie failed. Another shocking example is Fort Frances, a high school in northwestern Ontario. The number of tests they failed there is a shocking example of how this government continues to underfund. We already know that First Nations across Canada have an infrastructure deficit in the billions. This is an example of how it impacts them and where we see it.

The minister was emailed a statement or was asked to respond to this—that’s the Ontario Ministry of the Environment. She didn’t respond to questions about the province’s decision not to adopt the federal safety guidelines for lead. Why are they allowing the lower lead limits? And what did the minister say? Rather than responding—

Interjections.

The ayes are 60; the nays are 25.

In the couple of minutes I have left, I’ve got to be honest, I am shocked that the government is doing this. They claim to be the people to represent the people who are in Tim Hortons. I’m sure that the people in Tim Hortons are going to be quite disappointed when you say, “Yeah, yeah, we decided that we would just take a few more weeks off, or a month and a half off.” And “it’s not really off,” they’ll say, “but we’re working hard.”

It’s actually—I’ve heard the words “travesty to democracy.” Why is it a travesty? This government is afraid of questions to transparency. They’re just trying to avoid question period. But if you really think it through, it has a bit of a silver lining, because this government, some of their legislation is so terrible they’ve had to rescind six major pieces of legislation. This government is so terrible, perhaps six weeks less of them is a good thing. The fact is, all they’re trying to do is avoid questions and avoid scrutiny.

One of the questions that hasn’t been asked, and somebody could maybe give me the timeline: What is coming back first, beer to corner stores or the Ford government? Because they really seem to be concerned about that.

We’ve got emergency rooms closing across the province, yet the government says, “Oh, health care is great.” But when people go to emergency rooms, they’re closed. People looking for doctors—less and less people have doctors. It’s not getting better, it’s getting worse, and the government’s solution is, let’s stop—

Speaker, if you seek it, I think you will find unanimous consent to see the clock at 6.

It is an honour to rise today on this last day of our spring session for second reading of Bill 133, An Act to proclaim the month of September as Kids’ Online Safety and Privacy Month. If passed, the act would help raise awareness and provide opportunities to discuss the dangers that children face online, including cyberbullying, online grooming, sexual exploitation and, yes, human trafficking.

Between 2018 and 2022, online sexual luring of children escalated by 815%. That’s just in a five-year period. Imagine that. Statistics Canada also reported that the rate of child pornography increased by 290% between 2014 and 2022, with underage girls being overrepresented.

The addictive qualities of the Internet and digital technology also pose a risk to kids’ mental health. It is our responsibility as parents, educators, legislators and members of the wider community to protect children in a growing online environment. By declaring September as Kids’ Online Safety and Privacy Month, we can use that opportunity to equip children with the tools to protect themselves from the dangers of the Internet, and we can highlight the importance of digital supervision, education and responsibility.

While I’ve always been interested in the matter, at least since having kids, I want to recognize that this bill was inspired by Dr. Charlene Doak-Gebauer, founder of the charity called Internet Sense First and producer of the documentary Vulnerable Innocence. I encourage everybody here and everybody abroad to view this documentary for your own education. When I viewed the documentary myself, I was right away convinced that it was very much worth my time and effort to bring this issue to the Legislature.

Vulnerable Innocence features valuable information from experts and provides solutions to online safety for parents, professionals and caregivers. Dr. Doak-Gebauer’s advocacy emphasizes the lead for digital supervision because leaving our children unmonitored as they use the Internet only increases their risk of exploitation.

But I have to admit that when I finally gave in to each of my four kids to have a cellphone, as a parent myself, I was nervous about what they would access, and also, I didn’t know how to properly monitor them. After watching the documentary, I was encouraged to see that there was hope for parents to be more confident as to how to guide their kids.

The best place to start to educate children and youth and raise awareness on the warning signs is in our schools. That’s why September is the best time to declare Kids’ Online Safety and Privacy Month, because it coincides with the beginning of the school year. Through proper education initiatives, kids can themselves take preventative measures to limit their risk of harmful exposure on the Internet. Establishing support networks and resources during this month can lead to sustainable practices on Internet safety that extend beyond September, providing tools for children and youth for life that they can, in turn, use to teach their own kids.

Protecting children online also requires a collective effort from parents, educators, legislators and the community. It is our responsibility as a community to ensure that kids can navigate the Internet safely and confidently.

We need to be proactive in how we deal with the safety of our children online. We must educate ourselves and supervise our children’s use of digital technology. Parents need to be aware of their roles and responsibilities in supervising their children’s online activities. With this bill, the month of September would focus on encouraging parents, guardians, educators, legislators and the community to take steps to keep children safe.

The government is taking some steps to better protect the privacy of children online through their Bill 194 on cyber security, and I believe that Bill 133 is actually an excellent complement to the government’s work.

Bill 194 recognizes the need to monitor children and youth’s use of digital technology. During his debate on the bill, the Minister of Education said himself that parents “want government to strengthen the regime that protects kids online and in class from the harms—the constant, rising harms online—that can manifest in bullying, in trafficking and in self-harm.” What better way to achieve this than to dedicate one month a year to ensuring parents and children are aware of the dangers of online activity and know how to avoid them?

Bill 194 would also set the groundwork for a strong regulatory framework regarding artificial intelligence, and I want to thank the government for taking those steps. AI has brought about a whole host of new challenges and dangers online, and we need to be proactive in shielding our kids. For example, there have been many cases in recent years of AI being used to generate nude photos of children and those photos being circulated among their peers, and that’s a reality. Such a situation is absolutely devastating for a child and can have serious repercussions on their mental health. Many kids and parents also do not understand the legal and liability issues associated with producing such content. That’s why these conversations need to happen. Educating our kids on the dangers that AI presents and the ways to decipher what is real and what is not is an essential component of protecting your kids, and Bill 133 would help to do that.

A lot of human trafficking also begins online. Traffickers often use social media to recruit their victims, making children and youth particularly vulnerable. Sadly, the average age of recruitment into sex trafficking in Canada is only 13 years old.

Last year, the Legislature joined together to unanimously pass Bill 41, Protection from Coerced Debts Incurred in relation to Human Trafficking Act, which will help provide survivors of human trafficking with the financial freedom they need to rebuild their lives. While that was an important step to better supporting survivors, we must do more to prevent human trafficking from occurring in the first place. Bill 133 will help to do that by providing opportunities to educate parents and children about the common tactics that traffickers use online to recruit their victims and how to recognize them so children can avoid falling into those traps.

I hope all members in this House will support this legislation because I firmly believe that awareness and education are essential to addressing the issue of online safety for kids. But I also know that without action this bill will simply remain words on a page. As a result, I strongly encourage each of you to think of ways on how to improve digital supervision in your own communities.

I also urge the Minister of Education to use this legislation as a first step toward implementing real programs in our schools to educate kids about their online world, the dangers that exist and how to avoid them. It is these actions that will make this legislation come to life and have a real impact on improving the online safety of our kids.

It is the responsibility of parents, educators and the government to protect vulnerable populations, including children, from the unique risks posed by the digital age.

By proclaiming September as Kids’ Online Safety and Privacy Month, we can together help to reduce instances of online harm through education and awareness and help kids in Ontario stay safe.

I recognize the member from Burlington.

It’s a pleasure for me to stand in this chamber and voice my support for Bill 133, An Act to proclaim the month of September as Kids’ Online Safety and Privacy Month.

This legislation, of course, was introduced by my colleague the member for Ottawa–Vanier. While she and I may have our differences of opinion on many of the issues that come up for debate, I applaud her for taking action to keep kids safe from cyberbullying, online grooming and other dangers that they might encounter on the Internet.

There is nothing more important for our party and our government than the safety of Ontario’s children. I am proud to support Bill 133 because I believe it complements the many actions we’ve taken to protect Ontario’s children and youth.

In April, we announced that Ontario is explicitly banning vaping devices from schools and school-related settings along with nicotine and tobacco products. We took this action because the rate of vaping among students in grades 7 to 9 has increased in recent years, and the incidence of vaping among Canadian youth ranks among some of the highest in the world. Under our new policy, students found possessing vape products, as well as tobacco and nicotine will be asked to surrender them, and schools will notify their parents.

During that same announcement, we also announced that our government is taking action to heavily restrict the use of mobile devices, including cellphones, smart watches, tablets and laptops by students. Through changes that will come into effect this fall, students in grades 7 and up will be required to turn off their mobile devices or set them to silent mode and keep them out of view when they’re in the classroom.

For students in kindergarten to grade 6, we’re banning cellphones for the full instructional day. Devices must be turned off or set to silent and stored out of view for the duration of the school day. If a student doesn’t put away their phone, the teacher will ask them to place it in a storage area in the classroom for the duration of the lesson.

Additionally, the province is requiring all publicly funded school boards to restrict access to social media on school networks and school devices. Our decision to tighten the rules around students caught using cellphones during class time was primarily about removing distractions from learning, but it was also about protecting the mental health and physical health of Ontario’s students. Experts tell us that excessive cellphone and mobile device use have a negative impact on student mental health and well-being. Excessive cellphone and social media use can lead to depression and anxiety, and it puts children at risk of online abuse, cyberbullying and invasion of privacy.

As a mother and as an advocate for mental health, I believe the actions we have taken thus far will make a positive difference, but we’re not stopping there. Our government will continue to consult with law enforcement officials as well as social media and tech experts on ways to further crack down on cybercrimes and cyberbullying, and develop age-appropriate Web materials and workarounds on software exploits in schools.

Just recently, this chamber did a second reading debate for Bill 194. Should it pass, that legislation will provide new tools to prevent and respond to cyber security threats and safeguard critical public services, including the public education system.

Our government is serious about cyber security, and we believe that students deserve a school environment that is supportive and safe from distractions and peer pressures, where they can focus on learning.

Bill 133 can play a key role in helping our government to keep Ontario’s children safe, so once again, I’m proud to offer my full support for its passage.

It’s an honour to rise today, on the day that the Legislature is going to be recessing, to debate declaring September as Kids’ Online Safety and Privacy Month, and I want to thank the member from Ottawa–Vanier for bringing this bill forward. In the NDP, we’re very supportive of this. I think it will start a conversation, and it’s an opportunity to educate parents, children, educators, government officials and concerned citizens about the potential harms that are happening when children are online.

Before becoming an MPP, at one point I was a researcher. Some of my research was on gambling. One of the things that I learned about gambling is that slot machines have an algorithm, and the algorithm is designed to pay out a certain amount. It’s usually set at 80%, for example. So if you go in and you gamble $100 and your luck is totally even—it never would be—you would win $80. And then if you gamble that $80, you would win 80% of that, which is $64. And if you gamble the $64, you would win 80%, which is $48. So by the time you’ve gambled $500, you’ve won $400 and you’ve lost $100, and the $100 that you lost is the $100 that you walked in with, so you’ve come out broke, but you’ve gambled so many times. The lemons and the cherries and everything that keep coming up on the slot machines have nothing to do with the algorithm. The algorithm is just a very simple mathematical function. You could say, “I’m going to play this for an hour. I’m going to punch it 150 times an hour. What is the outcome going to be? Where will I be?” Your calculator or your phone or whatever device you’re using would be able to calculate that in a fraction of a second.

What those cherries and lemons and anchors and all those things are designed to do is—they design them, they show them in a way that makes you think that it’s going to pay out soon. It creates addictive—and it’s called engagement loops. So the idea of the slot machine—it’s designed to make players lose track of time so that they keep playing.

In social media, the scrolling is an engagement loop. The scrolling of apps is actually addictive for young people—for all of us, but for young people, in particular.

New York Times reporter Max Fisher wrote in a book called The Chaos Machine—and this is what it does. They say that slot machines are the heroin of gambling. It’s highly addictive because it gives you a dopamine response. Max Fisher wrote, “Dopamine creates a positive association with whatever behaviours prompted its release, training you to repeat them.... When that dopamine reward system gets hijacked, it can compel you to repeat self-destructive behaviours. To place one more bet, binge on alcohol—or spend hours on apps even when they make you unhappy.” And it’s not just those notifications that make them addictive; in apps, it’s the positive affirmation—it’s the likes; it’s the followers; it’s the updates from friends; it’s the photos of family and friends. That’s what makes social media apps, in particular, addictive.

The designer of some of these apps, Aza Raskin, who designed, actually, the infinite scroll in 2006—he was also an employee with Mozilla and Jawbone—said, “It’s as if they’re taking behavioural cocaine and just sprinkling it all over your interface and that’s the thing that keeps you ... coming back and back and back.” He said that many designers were driven to create addictive app features by the business models of the big companies that employed them.

“‘In order to get the next round of funding, in order to get your stock price up, the amount of time that people spend on your app has to go up’....

“‘So, when you put that much pressure ... you’re going to start trying to invent new ways of getting people ... hooked.’”

And that’s what’s happening to our children online. Social media is rewiring their brains. There was a study of university students who used social media for more than three hours each day, and those who did suffered from poor sleep, poor academic performance, much higher rates of depression, substance abuse, stress and suicide.

And the effect is even greater on younger people. Among those ages 10 to 19, that’s when your brain is in a fast development stage. You’re developing your sense of self-worth, and social media, the more you’re on social media, the more negative impact it has on your learning, on your behaviour, on your impulse control, on your emotional regulation.

More often, people who are on social media, young people who are on social media more have a negative body image, and 61% of Canadians aged 12 to 17 engage in social media several times a day, so we’ve got to be careful about what’s happening.

And the MRI scans—like when I said they’re rewiring their brains—MRI scans on teenagers showed that the reward centres in their brains lit up with increased blood flow when they were on social media.

And this is having a real impact on our schools. I spoke with some directors of education, with educators, and they said that kids are acting out. They’re getting up in the middle of class. There’s increased violence in schools. The elementary teachers have reported that violent incidents have increased by 72%, and the vast majority, 80% of teachers and staff members in schools, report that violence incidents have increased since they started working in public education.

So, the school boards in Ontario, several of them, have launched a lawsuit, and they’re against the social media companies, because they’re looking for money to pay for the supports that students need in order to overcome this. So it’s seven different school boards as well as two private schools that have joined this lawsuit.

And these school boards, their first concern, their primary concern is children’s mental health. When this lawsuit was announced, the Premier was asked, “Well, what do you think of this?” And his response, immediately—without investigating this, without even looking into it, without even looking into it, his immediate response was “Nonsense.” He criticized the school boards for standing up and taking the social media apps to court for the negative mental health impacts that they’re having on our children.

The government did come back, and as the government member just mentioned, they decided to ban cellphones in schools, or to make students shut off their cellphones while they’re in schools. And I was thinking about this. I’m thinking, yes, that’s probably a good thing, because it will reduce the amount of time that children are online, especially because it can be very distracting to have them in schools, but it really doesn’t get at the root of the problem.

And the root of the problem is that we need to find ways for children to be safe online, including using social media apps, and we need to look at the design of those social media apps and how they can be redesigned so that they’re not having a negative mental health impact on children.

When I’m talking about mental health impacts, that’s just one aspect, and as my colleagues have mentioned in here, there are also privacy issues. What happens to children’s data when these companies have it? Who owns it? How is it being sold? What algorithms are being developed to target them for advertising? This is something that we need to look at as legislators. I know the House is rising today, but this is what we should be looking at. We should be developing legislation to protect children from online harms. It goes to sexual exploitation, to deepfakes, artificial intelligence deepfakes.

I was a trustee before this, and there was a girl who had sent her boyfriend a picture of herself, and that went all through the school. It was intended just for him, and it went all through the school. She was just devastated by this. Her family was devastated by this. And this is just one incident. I say this—I know this has happened thousands of times across this province.

The member is bringing up this bill today to create online safety awareness month in September. It’s a good step. We need to do much more, because the other thing that happens online is sexual grooming.

The police have reported that there’s an increase in child sexual exploitation in Canada. In 2014, there were 50 incidents for 100,000 children; by 2022, it was 160 incidents for 100,000 children. For seven in 10 victims identified in online sexual offences against children, the victims were aged, for girls, 12 to 17, and 13% were girls under 12; and among boys, those aged 12 to 17 were 11% of the victims and 3% of those were under 12. We need to protect our children from this when they’re online.

The other thing that happens online, the other really damaging thing, is self-harm. There are violent online groups who are pressuring youth into harming themselves. This is from a CBC article this year: A 15-year-old girl carved the numbers “764” into her chest and then tried to kill herself. The RCMP said it is aware that there is an online group referred to as 764. As well as targeting minor victims internationally, it is connected to violent extremist groups. The father of that girl said in The Fifth Estate he discovered images of self-harm and disturbing messages between his daughter and a self-proclaimed member of 764 on a site called Discord.

We need to look at this. We need to make sure that this is not repeating itself. We need to cast light on the harms that are coming to our children online.

I’ve got a minute left, so I’ll talk about some of the policy recommendations that have come up and the research. They say you need to strengthen standards for age verification within social media apps, so that there aren’t children 12 who are pretending to be older on social media and becoming vulnerable.

The government needs to fund research on the impacts of social media on children and youth and well-being, and the results have to be transparent. They have to be made public.

They need to develop regulations for tech data collected on children and on the algorithms that are used to target them for advertising. We need to restrict harmful advertising from being directed at children and youth. This includes gambling, vaping, alcohol and unhealthy food.

The Canadian Paediatric Society also recommends that we need media and digital literacy training for students as part of the curriculum.

I welcome this legislation. I want to thank the member from Ottawa–Vanier for bringing it forward, and I look forward to using September as an opportunity for all of us to work toward educating parents, students, educators, government members and the general public about the potential harms and how to protect our children online.